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Disclaimer: The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew are the property of Simon and Schuster and the Stratemeyer Syndicate. No copyright infringement intended.

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"Well, so much for the nice cheery 'welcome home' I've been trying for." Bess said bitterly as Joe tossed the crushed ball of paper to the floor and stomped back upstairs. Glowering at her husband, she headed back into the other room and began tossing the contents of half emptied plates into the disposal.

"Explosions like that aren't exactly going to help him any." Frank noted with his own tones of frustration, leaning back against the table as she cleared it.

"What do expect, Frank?" Slamming the dishrag she held down, Marvin stared at him. "In only a day or so he's gone from a patient, a victim, to the next America's Most Wanted…and for all the support you've shown, you might as well have put up the bulletin yourself. At least he doesn't mince his feelings…you've been the epitome of enigma. Do you think he did it? Do you care enough to prove that he didn't? Is there anything remotely relate to brotherly love, simple loyalty still flitting about up there between your ears?"

"Loyalty?" He practically yelled, straightening and only barely managing to lower his voice. "You may be right. Maybe I haven't exactly rolled out the welcome wagon. Look, I don't even want to be here. But I'm trying. I want to get to the bottom of this, whether Joe is innocent or not. He hasn't even addressed the issue. It makes him look just a little guilty when his next pizza binge is apparently more important than explaining what happened with Nancy that night. He hasn't even mentioned her name."

"Neither had you until he woke up, but it's funny, I somehow get the impression you've thought about her every minute of every day since she disappeared. You're just too…too proud to let anyone in on your grief. So instead we get your misery." Eyes brimming, she turned away, running a hand through already disheveled hair.

"Bess…" The elder Hardy brother began quietly; temper fading as fast as it had rose. Moving a few paces, he wrapped both arms around her waist. "I'm sorry."

"No." Wry amusement in her voice, his wife and old friend stiffened and stepped out of reach. "I'm tired of hearing that particular lie. At any rate, it isn't me you owe anything to. I knew exactly who I was marrying and exactly what ghost was over your shoulder. But Joe deserves more. It isn't about his innocence or what he did or didn't do to Nancy. It's about what it's done to him. He's hurting. You're his big brother, the only one who can fix it. He needs you more than anyone else ever has. How can you expect him to talk about it…to even broach it…when all he sees is your cold shoulder for reception?"

"If I am the chief of sinners, I am the chief of sufferers also…" Frank said softly, arms dropping to his side.

"What?" Sitting in a dining chair, Bess rubbed her temples with a frown.

"The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde…it was the only book Joe ever read twice." Sighing slightly, he reached for the hooks nailed up near the door and grabbed his coat.

"I think the library is closed." She muttered sarcastically, crossing her arms and staring past him at the clock dolefully. "And so much for my beauty sleep."

"I know, sorry." He offered a wry smile. "You're right. I can't expect Joe to just spill everything. He needs time to adjust. I'll leave him alone for the night."

"That's awfully generous." She agreed, blue eyes blinking. "But what exactly does that have to do with leaving the house past dark on a snowy December night?"

"I'm going to talk to Con down at the station, see if I can get an idea of what it is they plan to hold over Joe's head. Once the press breaks in the morning things will heat up. I'd rather be a step ahead of the crowd."

"All right." She considered his plan, standing and moving to lift her own jacket. "But I go with you. I'll go stir crazy here."

"Someone needs to be here to keep a look out." Frank protested. "Joe could try to leave or some nutcase reporter could sneak up."

"I'll call Callie. I can't imagine she's getting any more sleep than we are." Moving towards the wall phone, Bess shook her head. "The only reporter you'll have to worry about then is Joel."

"I'm not encouraged."

"You aren't funny, Frank." Turning away, she spoke quietly into the phone as he wandered back to the bottom of the staircase and peered up. Though the upstairs hall was typically dark, a thin sliver of light escaped from under the doorway of his old room…Joe's old room.

"Joe." He shouted up. "We're going out. Callie is coming over."

The stereo volume climbed several notches in angry acknowledgement. He wouldn't do that if Mom or Dad were here, the elder brother thought, grim amusement quickly trailed by bereft loneliness.

"Frank." Bess stepped out of the kitchen, wrapping a scarf around her neck. "She's on her way. He'll be fine."

"I guess so." Holding the front door open as she ducked through, he headed for the parked car and hurriedly unlocked the doors, sliding into the driver's seat as her hook her safety belt.

Earlier pretensions aside, there was no denying that Bayport held a strange aura of disconnection. It could have been just the snow and the garish holiday lights…but everything seemed remote and unfamiliar, even the haunts nearest to childhood memory. He wondered briefly if it was how Joe had seen it all on the drive home, and felt more than slight guilt at his snappish dismissal. Sternly pushing the trace thoughts away, he clenched hands more tightly around the steering wheel and glanced over to his passenger. "Speaking of the unspeakable Nancy…I don't suppose there's anything you can offer to give a little insight into why she was in New York then? Something to put her actions into perspective, make things make a little more sense?"

Bess shook her head, eyes straying out the front window. "Whatever you'd recognize in Nancy by way of common sense was gone the instant we went to Wilder, Frank. I mean, she broke it off with Ned almost immediately, and became obsessed with keeping her father away from Avery Fallon. The first couple of years it was just typical stuff, the jealousy I guess we thought would be normal for someone adjusting to a new life on her own, someone who had never shared her father with anyone. But by our junior year Nancy was a mess of contradiction, a near stranger. She wanted everyone to forget she'd ever been Nancy Drew, girl detective, but she couldn't resist playing investigator and using the paper she worked for as a venue. She wanted to forget River Heights and all the history it entailed, but her dead mother suddenly became the center of her life. She...she felt that her father had more or less abandoned Mrs. Drew's memory. So she picked up what he dropped. She wanted to know everything…Sahra Drew's favorite song, her daily routine…but most of all Nancy wanted to know more about what killed her mother."

"I remember Dad mentioning it. Sahra suffered a fatal heart attack, right?" Frank interrupted. "That's got to be legal record, autopsy."

"Yes, it was a heart attack. But it was a drug-induced heart attack. The official cause of death was an accidental overdose. The last thing Nancy was willing to believe was that her mother was some common addict, so she did what she did best and investigated. As it turned out, Sahra Austin Drew was a college senior...she'd started taking classes when pregnant with Nancy... and an intern for the River Heights Chronicle the year she died. And, like her daughter, she was probably a little too nosy for her own good." Bess shook her head, wry sadness reflecting in her eyes. "Mrs. Drew was apparently investigating the drug ecstasy, the corruption and drug smuggling that was going through the banks and even certain aspects of the CIA."

"I thought ecstasy wasn't banned until at least the mid 80's." Frank frowned.

"1985, according to Nancy's research. In 1981 her mother was running an investigation into whether it should be made illegal and using other, already illegal drugs as reference. She was particularly interested in those being siphoned from the east, Egypt and the likes, having eastern blood. It turned out that a few hands were sticky, and she flushed the local federal office out pretty good, even wrote a prize-winning article for the Chronicle arguing for anti-drug laws. It wasn't much of a victory. She never lived to see a law passed, was found on the floor of the Drew home suffering the overdose just a few days after the case ended."

"That doesn't sound like much of an accident." He straightened, blinking as bright headlights swept by. "I can't believe it wouldn't have been investigated as a possible homicide."

Bess straightened as well, her tones darkening. "Nancy tried to ask her father about it, but he simply said he urged that they drop the case in order to protect Sahra's daughter. He thought it was what she would have wanted. And I just don't think he's ever wanted to believe that the government could have been deliberately responsible. He's an idealist in many ways."

"Maybe it wasn't the government. There had to have been a lot of people cashiered out of the services when private connections to the drug trading came out. If we could pin down the names of those Mrs. Drew brought into the spotlight..."

"Hey." Placing a hand on her arms, she smiled and caught his gaze. "Which case are we solving here, a three decade old murder or Joe's little problem?"

"If I can prove a connection, hopefully both." Settling his focus back on the road, Frank lifted a brow. "Do you know of a connection?"

"Frank, you can't be serious. Not every case is connected." She reminded with faint exasperation. "Look, I just told you that much to give a little insight into Nancy's mindset at the time. Let me finish. Near the middle of our senior year a string of GHB date rapes broke on campus. Nancy got this brilliant idea to be a decoy, hang out at one of the campus clubs and wait for the stalker to offer a drink, with George and I as backup. It worked, turned out to be a resident who worked with the local hospital and moonlighted at the campus clinic. It took a little longer than we expected for the police to arrive, though, so Nancy had to keep up the charade…she took a few shots of the stuff, spent all night in the hospital having her stomach pumped. We thought it was over…until Nancy appeared on George's doorstep a week before graduation a solid mess. Her contact had failed, and she was in withdrawal. She'd become addicted to the drug, and no one had even noticed…usually the addictive threshold is much higher. She didn't want to miss the graduation, so we had a pre med friend wrangle out some semi-legal substitute. Nancy promised to check into rehab as soon as the celebrations were over. I just assumed that was why she went to New York."

"Joe said Nancy told him that she'd 'found her mother' at the hotspot he was working with." Frank tried to fit the puzzle together mentally, perplexed. "So she was taking the GHB again…it causes hallucinations."

"Unless she wasn't hallucinating…when under the drug she was in control, Frank. We weren't as close to her as we'd been back home, but still George and I should have noticed something, anything, but…she was the same Nancy. She was in control. Maybe what she said to Joe wasn't meant to be literally…maybe she was trying to tell Joe something important."

"But what?" Scratching at the stubble on his face, the elder Hardy frowned. "What reference about her mother would possibly mean anything to him?"

Bess only shrugged, releasing the seat belt catch as they pulled up to the Bayport precinct. "That's for Joe to know."

Frank Hardy mentally cursed ever meeting Nancy Drew one last time, before squaring aching shoulders and following his wife into the unfriendly local domicile of government justice.  

And if Joe knew…